racketboy.com

Mega score in my book today at least. Been trying to find the game in this picture for quite a long while, never do see it complete even up on ebay with something missing (and yet still I can find just one complete sold at over $125 and shipping) I paid $17.

The other, love stuff like this, no maker as it's forced US made goods -- Made in Occupied Japan. A tin painted wind up galloping jockey and racehorse. Works like a dream still a good 70 years later and with minimal paint loss too. ($30.)





To be clear, neither are for sale. And tomorrow I'll be trying to clean up those Jarts as much as possible with a good safe cleaning.

CRTGAMER wrote:

Sarge wrote:Bought a pretty nice entertainment center for $65. Combination of plywood and oak construction, in great shape. I just need to cut some holes in the back of the bottom shelf areas for running cords, that's why I didn't close the door there.

The NES/SNES/Genesis are hooked up there right now, but are probably going to move along with the TV they were hooked up to (Sony Trinitron CRT) back to the game room. I'm making room by swapping out for a smaller chair, the one that's in there is just a bit too big.

That is a nice compact wall unit; appears to be made for a 4:3 CRT. I see you have a gap above the TV. My Wega had the same gap (though not as much) in the wall unit even though mine is a 4:3 HD CRT; I added a wood shelf up there to hold a switch box, cable box and Bluray player. For your gaming wall unit could be storage for the extra controllers.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. There's room to stash stuff at the top. Might slide the satellite receiver up there, or use for storage. My old Panasonic would have fit perfectly in there, but the vertical deflection circuit started crapping out, and I wasn't going to spend the money to get it fixed (or do the work myself, no thanks to working on CRT screens). Either way, it gets that TV out of disuse and sitting on the floor, and it frees up the CRT (which my brother doesn't like) to go back to the game room where it belongs. Especially since composite on the Sony looks awful. I'm thinking I will reserve that TV for stuff that has S-Video or better.

Dang, though, if that TV isn't amazing on the lag time, and by lag, I mean none. I actually tested it before I bought it, and used the 240p test suite to test again, and I pretty much nailed the center every time at 0 frames.

IT at work was throwing away some broken and antiquated stuff, so I got my pickings. Got a 4:3 Lenovo LCD monitor, an empty Dell tower (I think it's micro ATX), a PowerLite 8 way KVM for PS/2 and VGA (although I'll have to try and find the cabling for it), and...



Epson PowerLite 77c

https://www.amazon.com/Epson-PowerLite- ... B000Q5X85I

I didn't look into it too deeply yet, I don't even know if it works. I've never owned a projector, and I know little about them. This one has VGA, S-Video and composite video inputs, so it's perfect for retro gaming as far as inputs go. It was marketed as a business model projector, but a quick look at the reviews suggest that it's not bad for general use. One reviewer on Amazon said something along the lines of "I bought it for xxx but it looks so nice I'm considering using it for movies."

I have no idea how many hours are on the lamp, and again, I don't even know if it powers on. But it looks like the replacement lamps aren't expensive at all, so I'm not too worried about that.

Anyone remember The Power of the Force toy line from Kenner? I finally scored an X-Wing!


(not my image)

I fucking loved The Power Of The Force action figures when I was a kid, I had a ton of them (still do). But, only having kid money, I couldn't afford all the vehicles. I bought one, then what I would do is save the box and everything so I could exchange it for another. So at one point I had Darth Vader's Tie Fighter, an X-Wing, Luke's T-16. I ended up with a Tie Fighter and an "Airspeeder" (expanded universe, looks kinda like a Snowspeeder).

Anyways, since I still have the Tie Fighter, I got the idea a while back to get an X-Wing again. Then, in my man cave, suspend them from the ceiling with fishing line or something in such a way to look like this...



Problem is that those silly plastic toys go for more money than I care to spend. But I was able to find an X-Wing on eBay that isn't missing any parts, the catch is the electronics don't work. It's otherwise mint, but I was able to score it for a good price. I got it in yesterday and it looks fantastic. As I suspected, there's battery corrosion in the battery compartment. I can probably fix it, but I don't care if I can't since I only want it as a prop. I still have my Luke in X-Wing gear and Tie Fighter Pilot action figures, so I'm all set!

The fishing line thing works.

Might I suggest you tether it in either 2 to 4 locations, and then have those loop around a support and into a central point. I had some of those lame left over store bought furniture items. It's like a heighet/diameter of a couple no.2 pencil eraser tops, and it has a circle that is put through the side of it.

I did just this with a Lego set 2 years, ago that hard to get complete/custom Wright Flyer set from like 10+ years ago. It's too fragile to leave for cats and kids so I ran 2 loops of clear fishing wire around the upper and lower wings and slid as far towards center as the rails on bottom for landing on each side. The loops are like 2-3x around circles evenly pulled tight, and tied off through that metal piece I described and then finally another looped(more times over for strength third run off the top to a hook on the ceiling. It's never had a problem in all this time, even being Lego it hasn't loosened up either even if it ends up spinning in the wind when a fan is on.

For your X-Wing I'd do one down by the landing gear, set your angle on that, then a loop under each side set of wings toward center. TIE will be more tricky though as it doesn't have a counter spot to brace it as easily so that would have to be figured out.

https://www.grailed.com/listings/284000 ... it-sweater? Got a new sweater

Copy of Battlelore 1st edition on Ebay for $40 shipped. That is only $20 less than normal, but in the pictures something caught my eye:


The brown and green bases are expansions, dwarf and goblin, and there are atleast two expansions for each in there based on the pennants and weapons: Bearded Brave, Scottish Wars, Goblin Skrimishers, Goblin Marauders. Each expansion is $50ish

Got some patio furniture for 45 bucks. Big table with a working crank umbrella and 6 chairs, all really nice. Probably worth like 300-400

I did find some really sweet non-gaming stuff today at thrifts. Evaded the usual flea weekend run this go around to do a garage sale with the neighborhood so I went thrift trolling this afternoon and I'm happy I did really.

$6 for the all wood fold up table, just needed a cleaning and screw tightening on it. Now I have a nice fold up table to put stuff on in my chair there or for having lunch on at the first goodwill.

The Dune 2000 game is spotless and case still has the original Sony sticker seal over the top for $6 too at HPB.

For $5 there's the Looney Tunes 2 DVD set there and also a really amazing ($1) Beatles Live at the BBC 2 CD set which is also spotless and has 69 tracks on it which is nuts. It's from 1994, never heard of it before but it's rare to find that much on 2 discs and has a booklet in there too both at goodwill. https://en.wikipedia...(Beatles_album)

And at a St Vincent Depaul shop for $5 found this kickass 1980s GE Model 3-5283-A ghettoblaster -- great loud speakers, solid working tape deck(haven't had one of these in over 20yrs), great radio on it, power cord with it, or runs on 6Cs.

Tanooki wrote:a really amazing ($1) Beatles Live at the BBC 2 CD set which is also spotless and has 69 tracks on it which is nuts. It's from 1994, never heard of it before but it's rare to find that much on 2 discs and has a booklet in there too both at goodwill. https://en.wikipedia...(Beatles_album)

I can't follow your link. Are you talking about the Beatles Live on BBC radio 2 CD set with a green apple on the first disc and a sliced-in-half apple on the second disc? Because I have that set.

It's really interesting from a historical point of view, but it's not great for casual listening. About 20% or so of the tracks are spoken words and interviews on BBC radio. The other 80% are songs, but a few of the earlier songs are recorded with terribly poor quality. This 2 CD set is arranged in chronological order. The earliest tracks were recorded before The Beatles became the biggest rock-n-roll band in the world. They were just four kids with no budget for proper recording at that time. It's fascinating if you're interested in Beatles history, but the sound is so shrill that I find it physically painful to listen to those earliest tracks.

After you get about halfway through the first CD, the audio quality improves around 1966~ish when someone had the foresight to record The Beatles in higher quality for posterity. After this point the music is pleasant to listen to, but just when I start grooving, the music stops to make time for another interview. Don't get me wrong; I find the interviews interesting too. There's something about the pacing that throws me off. I might have enjoyed this set more if it was arranged with the interviews and low def music on one disc and the high quality music on the other disc. Instead the set seems to be arranged in a strictly chronological order without concern for the listener's experience.

Personal anecdote: the first time I got this Beatles 2 CD set, I played it at a party with a bunch of my drunk friends. That didn't go over well. I didn't understand beforehand that this CD set is aimed at historical preservation rather than creating a fun party atmosphere. Imagine all those drunkards taking shots, popping cans, lighting blunts, and snorting lines. Then all of a sudden I play a spoken word interview followed by a shrill rendition of "Love me do". I was not the most popular guy at the party that night. It was pretty embarrassing at the time, but I laugh about it in retrospect.

Years later I took the time to listen to this Beatles 2 CD set on my own and found the whole presentation interesting if not especially pleasant. I'll be honest here, This CD set spends more time sitting on my shelf that it does sitting in my CD player, but it's still nice to own for the archives.